Laptops and desktops from Lenovo with the upgraded Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will become available starting in early April, with Hewlett-Packard planning shipments of business PCs soon after, the companies said.

HP will also ship consumer PCs with the service pack around mid-June, with other back-to-school products, a company spokesman said.

PCs with Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will include patches and fixes issued by Microsoft since the OS was released in October 2009. Users could otherwise spend hours manually installing patches and Service Pack 1, which became available for download in mid-February.

The upgrade could also reduce the strain involved in patching new client PCs in enterprises. Dell CEO Michael Dell in the past has said that PCs with Intel's Sandy Bridge processors and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 could boost the client PC refresh cycle.